Earl Ofari HutchinsonDisgraced entertainer Bill Cosby did the predictable when he screamed there was racial bias in the jury selection in his scheduled trial. This wasn’t the first time Cosby screamed racial foul play. He did it when he claimed there was a racial motive behind the dozens of women who claimed he drugged, raped and sexually abused them for years. Then there is the report that Cosby was peeved that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson won’t publicly defend him. This may or may not be true. But Cosby is friends with both the civil rights leaders.Cosby is hardly the only one screaming that the case against him is take your pick: the white man, white establishment, or a sensationalism driven media establishment trying to bring down a wealthy, prominent black man. Thousands of other blacks, and many Cosby fans, shouted the same thing virtually from the moment the accusations of sexual rapacity started flying against him. They endlessly cite prominent, wealthy celebs, from Woody Allen to Charlie Sheen to Bill O’Reilly, to bolster their contention that there is a vicious malignant, racial double standard in hammering Cosby while letting the other big-name white sexual miscreants skip away relatively untouched. Let’s be perfectly clear. Cosby is on trial for sexual assault. The jury that he got given the relatively sparse number of blacks in the county he’ll be tried in is about as racially balanced and fair as he’ll get. Also, he has the deep pockets to get the best legal team money can buy. They made sure they got the best jury he could get. He will be found innocent or guilty based on the evidence, not because he’s black. Given the sheer number of alleged victims, the hideousness of their accusations, and that many of them were white women, Cosby got the biggest pass one could imagine, in not being hauled into a court before now by a prosecutor. He could thank his fame, name and money for that. Something few blacks could ever dream of.But can even Cosby make a case he’s being racially targeted? Yes and no. In his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, former President Obama ticked off a standard checklist of slights and abuses that he had routinely faced; security guards tailing him as he shopped in department stores, white couples who toss him their car keys as he stands outside a restaurant waiting for the valet, police cars pulling him over for no apparent reason.Obama noted that he was subjected to these slights and insults during his college days and even after he launched his professional career. The racial attacks, and vilification and slanders certainly didn’t stop when he set foot in the Oval Office.Obama happened to be the most glaring, and to some, surprising examples of a prominent black subject to abuse. But legions of prominent blacks have had the same or worse experiences. They tell harrowing tales about being embarrassed, harassed, and assailed by police, private security guards, storeowners, and clerks. Their names read like a who’s who of the wealthiest and biggest names among blacks. This is especially the case with big name celebrities who wind up in a court docket. Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, and of course, O.J. Simpson, loudly hinted that race had much to do with their legal woes.Cosby, didn’t say it directly, but many others note that black celebrities, professionals, business leaders, are hauled or slammed to the curb and arrested at any time no matter their status or appearance. Supposedly, it’s their very prominence that stirs resentment, jealousy, and harassment. It’s the old uppity Negro syndrome spruced up in modern day resentments over the wealth and success of prominent blacks. Many Cosby defenders were quick to claim that he became a marked man when he floated the idea of buying NBC in 1992. The very notion of a black man owning a mega media outlet was supposedly considered racial heresy.  There’s no proof of any racist conspiracy to nail Cosby because of this, or because of his fame. The Cosby-NBC rumored deal came almost a quarter century before his indictment in Pennsylvania. During those years, Cosby was lauded, feted, and praised as the nation’s number one dad. He was given every platform imaginable to chastise other blacks for their alleged laggard, immoral failings. Even after the accusations against him mounted up of sexual misdeeds, and he confessed to giving drugs to one woman and getting drugs for other women he wanted to have sex in an affidavit he swore to in 2005, legions of legal experts either defended him or claimed there were no legal grounds to prosecute him because the statute of limitations had long since run out on most of the claims. Cosby acknowledged that officials in Allegheny County bent over backward to make things “very very smooth” for him.That may be. But the bitter reality is that Cosby’s legal pass finally ran out in a Pennsylvania courtroom. And like so many prominent black men, so did his racial pass.    Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is author of Cosby: The Clash of Race, Sex and Celebrity (Amazon Kindle). He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.See More

 Earl Ofari HutchinsonThe hideous slaying of second lieutenant Richard W. Collins III on the University of Maryland campus did more than evoke heartfelt grief and sorrow over the snuffing out of a young, hopeful, and high achieving young man’s life. It also again cast an ugly glare on the gaping double standard in how black lives matter versus those of white lives.  Let’s go through the agonizing, but by now all too familiar, checklist of things that are terribly wrong with how his death has been treated. First, there’s the alleged assailant, Sean Urbanski, a young white man. The tributes to Collins had barely poured out at Bowie State University, where he was days from graduating, when Urbanski’s attorney not only pled innocence for his client, but implored the court to release him on own recognizance, provide alcohol and drug testing counseling, and monitor him during his release by GPS.The request was denied. Then there are the charges. He is charged with first degree murder.  So far so good. However, the irrefutable fact is that Collins was African-American, and Urbanski is white. He has a documented connection with an Alt Reich- Nation FB group, and there is absolutely no evidence of any provocation on the part of Collins to precipitate the murder. Now there’s the Alt-Reich group that he belonged to. Even this has been sloughed off as just a light hearted, silly, fun and games, attempt by some college guys to draw attention to the group. The founder of the group was given tons of ink to make the case that spewing racism and white nationalism as the furthest thing from the minds of those associated with the group, and presumably that includes Urbanski, Then there is Urbanski. The predictable happened. He was immediately depicted by friends and associates as a quiet, assuming, even good natured fellow, who couldn’t hurt a fly. All expressed shock and surprise that this seemingly good natured, all-American, clean cut good guy could commit such a dastardly crime.That’s not a small point. The image massage of the group as harmless fun loving, and satirical outing on social media by some thrill-seeking college students, not to mention the glowing depiction of Urbanski, almost takes off the table the charge that he murdered Collins out of racial malice. In other words, that the murder is a hate crime and he should be charged under state or federal law as a hate crime perpetrator. The Prince George’s County Attorney expressed doubt and hesitancy about the motive. The Justice Department has been stone silent on whether it will consider a separate hate crime prosecution of Urbanski. The argument is always why bring a hate crime charge in these cases, even if there is a racial intent? The assailant is already being charged with and will be tried on a first-degree murder count.This badly begs the question. A hate crime enhancement in racial assaults and murders is on the books as a deterrent and punishment to racially motivated assaults and murder. The failure to bring hate crimes charges sends the dangerous message that hate crimes, especially hate murders, will not be punished as racially driven hate crimes, but won’t even be called that even when there is compelling evidence they are. And the incidences of hate crimes have shown no sign of diminishing. Year in and year out, the FBI’s annual reports on hate crime violence in America report thousands of them. There are probably thousands more that aren’t reported. A murder charge and a conviction in racially motivated hate attacks and murders alone is hardly a disincentive stern to curb hate crimes.  There is also evidence that white nationalist, white supremacist groups and the social media ravings of kooky unhinged hate mongers hold a perverse fascination for many white students on college campuses. Since Trump’s election, a CBS report found nearly 150 incidences of racist posters and fliers on college campuses in nearly three dozen states.But even before Trump’s election ushered in a new era of hate and intolerance, bigotry, hardly a week went by without a report somewhere of hanging nooses, white hoods, racist graffiti, racial slurs and taunts aimed at minority students. The colleges that have been called on the carpet for the racist acts read like a who’s who of American higher education. Clemson University, Auburn, Lehigh, Tarleton State, Texas A&M, University of Texas, Austin, University of Connecticut, Johns Hopkins, Whitman College, the University of Oklahoma, U.C.L.A., U.C. San Diego, and the University of Maryland, to name only a very handful. The Harvard University Voices of Diversity project found campuses rife with subtle and not-so-subtle “microaggressions“ against minority and women students.The final insult. The Collins slaying quickly disappeared from the headlines.Urbanski may or may not be charged with a hate crime. But the hesitation, doubt and apparent reluctance of officials to call racial hate racial hate even when it’s murder, tells much about the glaring double standard in how hate crimes are dealt with.Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. His Latest Ebook, How the Democrats Can Win Again in the Trump Era (Amazon Kindle). He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.See More

Earl Ofari HutchinsonA conservative critic of the decision by the Texas Southern University President to disinvite GOP Conservative Texas Senator John Cornyn to give the commencement address at the university challenged me that this was a dangerous example of banning speakers students disagree with and compared it to the free speech movement of the 1960's when radicals routinely disrupted or prevented conservatives from speaking on campuses.There's no comparison. First and foremost, I applaud the students AND administration at TSU for disinviting Cornyn and roundly condemn the President at Bethune Cookman for shamefully and gracefully inviting Uneducation Secretary Betsy DeVos to speak. 1. This was not a campus forum or lecture series where an arguable case can be made for free speech in inviting an unpopular speaker. This was a commencement ceremony. The established tradition is that speakers at commencements MUST reflect the spirit, values, outlook, and identification with the mission of the University, if not why else invite them. Cornyn and especially DeVos by their words, deeds, lobbying, legislative action and philosophy are AVOWED enemies of African-American interests. Could you imagine inviting a Neo Nazi to address a commencement at American Jewish University under the dubious guise of free speech???2. The graduating seniors at HBCU's have paid a lot of money for their degrees in tuition, private donations, and endowment funding. THEY have a right to have a say in who will address them. 150,000 students, faculty, and alumni assn. members of BC said a resounding NO to DeVos.3. The invitation of DeVos and initially of Cornyn to TSU was a nakedly pandering political choice to curry favor with Trump and the GOP conservatives. That is NOT why or at least it shouldn't be why speakers are chosen for commencement addresses. NO, This is not a legitimate free speech issue or an issue of students heavy handedly banning speakers they disagree with. It's the diametric opposite. Graduating seniors who worked hard to earn a degree want and expect and deserve to hear a speaker in tune with their hard work, efforts, and, yes, view of the world inspire, encourage and reinforce them as they go forward in life. Not someone who is working overtime to destroy their vision and goals in life. See More

Earl Ofari HutchinsonThese are the known facts in the slaying of fifteen-year old Jordan Edwards by former Balch Springs, Texas police officer, Roy Oliver. He had no criminal record. He was unarmed. He posed no threat to the officer. The facts were straightforward enough that Dallas County District Attorney, Faith Johnson, wasted no time in filing murder charges against Oliver. But, as always, in the rare times that a DA charges a cop in the killing of an unarmed civilian, a charge is just the start of what has often been a long train of frustration, muddle, and, more often than not, bitter disappointment in the prosecution of cops who wantonly kill civilians.The two starting points are the defense attorneys hired to defend the officers charged. Police unions quickly step in and retain top gun defense attorneys with lots of experience defending police officers accused of misconduct. Police unions bankroll their defense and spare no expense. Cops rarely serve any pre-trial jail time, and are released on ridiculously low bail. That was the case with Oliver. He posted bail and was almost immediately released. Their attorneys then play for time, time, time. They know that it’s on their side. To buy time, they employ an endless storehouse of legal tact’s, ploys, and dodges to delay the start of a trial.The time factor is crucial because memories dim, passions cool, and anger dissipates in police killings. Put simply, other than the victim’s families, the public moves on. The slayings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Terence Crutcher are near textbook examples of how cases are dragged out. The men were slain months ago. The officers involved in the Castile and Crutcher slayings were charged. In the Sterling slaying, there have been no state charges yet. The Justice Department declined to prosecute. These cases virtually disappeared from the public radar scope, with the passage of time.  But defense attorneys do more than toss out motion after motion to get the charges against the officers dismissed, get a change of venue, or get a bench trial. They also massage and craft the public image of the officers as dedicated, hard-working public servants unjustly victimized by vindictive prosecutors. Johnson had barely filed the murder charge against Oliver when it started. He was an Iraq veteran. He served honorably. He suffered from PTSD. Conveniently omitted from the sympathy narrative was the obvious question, if he had a known disorder that could impair judgement why was he on the police force in the first place.?This is just one part of the public and media charm campaign. The other is to dredge up any arrest or criminal record they can find on the victim, smear him in the media, and bank that it taps hard into the old, and reliable crime and violent prone stereotype and negative typecast of young black males. The message is loud and clear. The victims aren’t altar boys, but bad guys who must bear culpability for their deaths.The negative perceptions of blacks, especially black males, by much of the public are not the only problem in effecting effective legal measures against police violence. There is no ironclad standard of what is or isn’t an acceptable use of force in police misconduct cases. It often comes down to a judgment call by the officer. In the Rodney King beating case in 1992 in which four LAPD officers stood trial, defense attorneys painted King as the aggressor and claimed that the level of force used against him was justified.This pattern has been evident in many celebrated cases since then. It’s made even easier to sell the notion that somehow the victims bare culpability for their deaths by dragging in their past. Police then claim that they feared for their lives in confronting them and they use deadly force solely in self-defense. If brought to trial, judges and juries routinely buy this line and acquit.If the cops are tried by a jury, police defense attorneys seek to get as many middle-class people, whites, and even blacks and Latinos, on the jury as possible. The presumption is that they are much more likely to believe the testimony of police and prosecution witnesses than black witnesses, defendants, or even the victims.The code of silence is another powerful obstacle to convicting bad cops. Officers hide behind it and refuse to testify against other officers, or tailor their testimony to put the officer’s action in the best possible light.Then there are the judges. Studies on judicial bias, both overt and implicit, have found the bench anything but impartial. Judges make decisions on bail, pretrial motions, evidentiary issues, witness credibility, and jury selection, and instructions to the jury.In the case of police officers who appear in court, they face judges who in many cases they have faced often as police officers testifying in criminal cases, they are known quantities. They also have a phalanx of family members and police supporters standing solidly with them in court. They are anything but the average run of the mill common criminal, and judges are well aware of that.Johnson will have a tough, uphill fight on her hands to convict Oliver, no matter how seemingly compelling the evidence. And that’s exactly why cops repeatedly walk free. Will Oliver be any different?Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the new ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle).  He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network. See More

Earl Ofari HutchinsonIn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director James Comey defended going public with his letter on the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server flap at the 11th hour of the presidential election. The question, the answer, and the implication that hung heavy was that Comey’s release of the letter tipped the election to Trump. Clinton has flatly blamed his perfectly timed election eve release of the letter for her loss. Not a whole lot of people agree with her on that. The near universal consensus among pundits, a new book, Shattered, by two Politico writers, that dissects the Clinton campaign’s foibles and missteps, and many on the street, is that Clinton lost because she was a lousy candidate.They endlessly claim that she didn’t message right, snubbed the white working class, was too arrogant, aloof, and know it all, and smugly believed she had the election in the bag. If she lost it wasn’t because anything Comey did, but because of Clinton.Let’s be clear. Comey’s letter did wreak colossal damage on Clinton. In the hours before the release, polls showed Clinton with almost a 6-point bulge over Trump. The letter swiftly changed that. Her poll lead plunged to under 3 points. Even factoring in polling margins of error, volatility, bias, and voter deception, that’s still too big a swing in such a short period of time to shrug off as irrelevant. Clinton’s numbers dropped after the Comey letter for two other good reasons. It hardened the belief among big swatches of the public that Clinton was untrustworthy at best, and a serial liar at worse, who might wind up in a court docket. It also endlessly fed the avaricious media search and play up any Clinton scandal in the waning moments before the election’s end.In this case, timing was everything. Despite his long and loud protestations, Comey had to know that. If not, why then did he keep his mouth shut about the FBI’s probe of Trump’s Russia connection which was ongoing at the same time?Then there is Trump. There was always a path for a Trump White House win no matter what Clinton said or did. Much was made that there weren’t enough less educated, blue-collar white men in the electorate to push Trump over the top. But that was always misleading. Trump got a lot of votes from middle-class whites, both male and female, college educated, business, and professionals. They had one thing in common and that one thing wasn’t borderline bigotry, loathing of Obama, or dislike and rejection of a Democrat. They still wanted what powered Obama’s 2008 win—change.Clinton simply was not that change. To them, she was the consummate beltway established, corporate influenced, deal making politician. The Clinton name was the embodiment of that image and dislike. There were two huge tip-offs that Trump was their perfect antidote to that. The first was he held no political office and burnished that fact as a point of pride and as his credential of why he would be different. The other was his muscle aside against seemingly all odds of a dozen rock solid establishment Republican presidential contenders from the race. Elections are almost always won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters. In Trump’s case, white males, older voters, middle-income, college educated voters vote consistently and faithfully. And they vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks, and especially young voters. The only exception was 2008. Obama’s run turned the campaign into a crusade to make racial history. There was absolutely no way that Clinton could ever have recaptured that enthusiasm, passion, energy, and sense of making history that was there for Obama.Also, Trump was loathed by many from the start, but the Trump haters weren’t going to vote for him anyway. But Clinton was loathed too, and that absolutely nothing to do with anything she said or did on the campaign trail. It had everything to do with a two decade long artful, masterful and relentless smear campaign by the GOP against her. A year before she declared her 2016 candidacy the Republican National Committee was in full torpedo Hillary mode. It was busily churning out anti-Hillary videos, releases, and paid books by party hacks lambasting Clinton on everything from her and Bill’s foundation’s alleged shady dealings to Benghazi.The notion that Trump was so repugnant and repulsive, and that Clinton would make mincemeat of him in the campaign was also dangerous. It lowered the bar so low in the dirt for Trump that all he had to do was show up on the campaign trail sober and reasonably coherent to score points. The bar for Clinton was stratospheric. She was a woman, a Clinton, and perennially tainted by the GOP’s endless, phony and manufactured scandals against her. It would have taken a miracle to overcome that. There would be none in 2016. And that had nothing to do with anything Clinton did, or didn’t do. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the new ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle).  He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.See More

Earl Ofari HutchinsonBefore I get to what Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders got right and wrong about former President Obama’s big Wall Street speech paydays, here’s a personal note. I have headed a non-profit public advocacy and education foundation for more than a decade, and in that time, every penny that I have received from speaking fees, appearances, and other public activities, have been turned over to the foundation to boost our donor program. Not one penny has been taken for personal use or profit.The instant word leaked that Obama would nab a big payday from Cantor-Fitzgerald for a speech in September and another $400,000 for speaking to advertisers at an A&E function, the loud screams were that Obama was shamelessly and even hypocritically profiteering off his name, reputation, and former position to enrich himself. There was little said that he’d put much, if not all, of the heavy-duty cash he received back into the public education and leadership training foundation he has set up. Former presidents and other big name public figures and celebrities often do exactly that with foundations they establish. But that’s a detail that’s almost never mentioned in the rush to tag them as greed merchants selling their name for big bucks.Now Warren and Sanders didn’t use those words to blast Obama for taking Wall Street and big corporate cash, they took the high road and merely said that it set a terrible example by pandering to Wall Street and big corporate donors. The very people and element that Obama from time to time lambasted and sparred and jostled with in trying to somewhat tighten regulations and toughen oversight over Wall Street.They have an arguable case on this point. Obama did often preach about the evils of a financial industry that makes its own rules, skirts, ignores and openly subverts the minimal regulations imposed on it, and rakes in billions in profit with a storehouse of taxpayer backed goodies. Wall Street banks and investments houses are both the symbol and reality of the worst of the worst of financial and corporate abuses. Yet, here is their one time White House antagonist taking their money. It just didn’t look and feel right and the way to make it look and feel right was for Obama to do what other former White Houses occupants didn’t do, namely the Clintons, and that’s just say no to the hefty corporate dollars dangled in front of him. Obama could have done that, but it would not have registered the slightest tick on Wall Street’s dollar scales. It would not make Wall Street pause for a nano-second in its relentless, and never ending war against the Dodd-Frank and other financial regulations.Obama is now a private citizen and he has absolutely no power to influence any of the doings in Congress, let alone the White House. But Warren and Sanders, as populist senators, are the ones who can parry the assault by the financial industry on the regulations, relentlessly publicly expose and excoriate Wall Street for its financial conniving and manipulation, and rally Democrats to stand tough against Trump and the GOP’s plan to scrap Dodd-Frank regulations. This is where their fight is and will continue to be, not with Obama for being paid a sum that amounts to pocket change for a major Wall Street firm.It’s also assumed that a public figure who speaks before a Wall Street or corporate audience just by their appearance puts their stamp of approval on the dealings of the financial industry. But that’s not why a financial group will pay a stiff fee for a noted public figure to speak to them. They are there because they are as a media and public draw, and to enhance the name and prestige of the company shelling out the fee. It is not expecting scripted and saccharine praise but to discuss the very tough issues and criticisms that businesses have become accustomed to hearing from Warren and Sanders. The likelihood is that Cantor-Fitzgerald will hear those same criticisms from Obama in his speech.To their credit, Sanders and Warren did not say that Obama should not accept the $400,000 from Cantor-Fitzgerald, or any other amount of money offered from any other Wall Street outfit. That would be presumptuous at best, and meddling at worst. Obama will be a hot ticket commodity on the speaking circuit for a long time to come. There will undoubtedly be more high fee offerings to speak before a variety of public and even financial groups. And there will also be requests for him to speak before groups that can’t pay him a nickel, but are groups that he believes in their cause. Of course, these freebie Obama speeches won’t be mentioned, since there’s no chance to manufacture a controversy at his expense with them. Obama’s taking money from Wall Street won’t change Wall Street, that’s Warren and Sanders’s fight.Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the new ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle).  He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.See More

 Earl Ofari Hutchinson#45 Trump got one thing right about the media hyped first 100 days measuring stick of a new president. It’s a silly measure. In fact, presidents from John F. Kennedy to Obama have derided the 100-day fetish and correctly noted that the far better to gauge how effective or bumbling an incoming president is the first 1000 days. A quick look at the presidency of Clinton and Bush is enough to prove that. Clinton bombed badly in pushing Congress for a $16 billion stimulus package; he bungled the don’t ask, don’t tell policy regarding gays in the military, and got the first flack on his health care reform plan. Yet, the Clinton presidency is regarded as one of the most successful, popular and enduring in modern times.Then there’s the Bush presidency. He got off to a fast start. At the 100-day mark in April 2001, his approval ratings matched Obama’s. He was widely applauded for his trillion-dollar tax cutting program, his “Faith-Based” and disabled Americans Initiatives, and for talking up education, health care reform and slashing the national debt. But aside from the momentary adulation he got after the 9/11 terror attack his presidency is rated as one of the worst in modern times.But while Trump, like Kennedy and Obama, got it right in ridiculing the 100-day time span as being way too short to call a new presidential administration a success or failure, it’s not too short a period to call his White House stint the worst 100 days ever. It’s not his consistent bottom wallowing popularity rating that tags his administration the worst first time start ever. It’s not even his record of non-accomplishment which amounts to a slew of inconsequential executive orders that mostly attempt to torpedo some of Obama’s executive orders, and his disastrous, court derailed Muslim immigrant ban. It’s the utter lack of any hint that things will get any better during his next 100, or even 1000 days in the White House.The tip offs of his future cluelessness are everywhere. He’s the least politically equipped winning presidential candidate to ever sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. Now that was the great asset that got him elected since so many Americans were supposedly so fed up with the insular, corrupt, deal making, corporate dominated, politics of Beltway Washington. Trump was supposedly the remedy for that. This delusion should have been shattered with the parade of Goldman Sachs tied, Pentagon connected generals, and Trump corporate cronies that he plopped into his cabinet and top staff positions. This could only mean one thing, the corporate and political regulars that Trump pretended to sneer at would do what they always do and that’s run the government show for him, as they have for other GOP presidents.  The flop on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the polarizing vote on his Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch did two seemingly impossible things. It turned off legions of hard right GOP House conservatives and moderate Senate Democrats who had made some soundings about trying to work out an accommodation with Trump on some legislative and policy issues. The future here is going to be one of never-ending, time consuming, get nothing done rancor and in-fighting between Trump and Congress.The Russia election meddling scandal, Trump’s refusal to disclose his taxes, and his dubious conflict of interest business dealings insure that the screams for congressional investigations will only get louder in the days and months to come. This will continue to keep the tens of millions who want Trump bounced from office revved up. They’ll continue to turn up at GOP and Democratic congresspersons town halls and shout them down on any defense they try to make of Trump’s policies and actions.Trump’s weak defense against prolonged and guaranteed failure is to toss a few missiles or drop a bomb every now and then or saber rattle the usual suspect villains, ISIS, Assad, the Taliban, and the North Koreans. The media will run with this for a time, and some commentators who should know better will even call his acts forceful and presidential. This will wipe his political and legislative flops off the front page for a day or so, and give him a point or two bump up in the polls. But even here, he can only go to the well so often with the military tough guy act before this starts to wear thin, and some begin to catch on to his wag the dog game.The 1000-day mark that Obama, Kennedy and other presidents cited as the more realistic time frame is not an arbitrary number. That marks the near end of a president’s first White House term. The honeymoon is over, and the president has fought major battles over his policies, initiatives, executive orders, court appointments and programs with Congress, the courts, interest groups and the media. Battles that by then have been won or lost, or fought to a draw, and there’s enough time to gauge their impact and the president’s effectiveness. In Trump’s case, it won’t matter. His first1000 days will be like his first 100, the worst presidency ever.Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of the new ebook How the Democrats Can Win in The Trump Era (Amazon Kindle).  He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network. See More

Watch The Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestream, Saturday, April 29, 9:00 AM PST Noon EST from the Corner of Florence and Normandie, Los Angeles in a Look Back and Forward on the 25th Anniversary of the L.A. Riots. By Earl Ofari HutchinsonIt has become a ritual with me. On the 10th, 20th, and now 25th anniversary of the L.A. riots, I do a press tour of several of the same burned out empty lots in South L.A. I preface the tour with a finger point at the empty lots, and ask, no challenge, with the question: “Why years after the riots are these empty lots where thriving businesses once stood still empty today.” I quickly point out that in the years, no decades, since many parts of Los Angeles from the westside to downtown have been virtually remade. Billions have been poured into the construction of glitzy, pricey, showy, and functional office buildings, retail stores, boutiques, restaurants, hi-tech centers, and lite industry and manufacturing enterprises.The building bonanza has resulted in thousands of new construction, and entry level and professional jobs. In the process, it’s enriched the tax coffers of the city and surrounding cities. The lame excuse that there’s no economic incentive to build in South L.A won’t fly. Residents spend millions on consumer goods and services, tens of thousands are well-to-do business and professional and trades persons, and they repeatedly clamor for quality retail, restaurant and service business in South L.A. But the lots remain empty.While speaking with the press at the burned-out lots, my mind continually goes back to those two fateful days at the end of April and the first day of May 1992, I ducked around police cordons and barricades, and cringed in fear and anxiety at the cackle of police gunfire and the non-stop roar of police fire engines and siren all around my house in South L.A. I choked, and gagged on and was blinded by the thick, acrid smoke that at times blotted out the sun and gave an eerie surreal Dante’s Hell feel to Los Angeles. I watched many Los Angeles Police Department officers stand by virtually helpless and disoriented as looters gleefully made mad dashes into countless stores. Their arms bulged with everything from clothes to furniture items. I watched an armada of police from every district throughout California and the nation, National Guard units and federal troops drive past my house with stony, even scared looks on their faces, but their guns at ready.I watched buildings, stores and malls that I shopped at and frequented instantly disappear from the landscape in a wall of flames. Several friends that lived outside L.A. and were concerned about my safety implored me to leave my home in the middle of the riot area and stay with them until things blew over. I thanked them but I decided to stay put. As a journalist, I felt bound to observe and report first-hand the mass orgy of death and destruction that engulfed my South Los Angeles neighborhood during the two fateful days of the most destructive riot in U.S. history.The warning signs that L.A. was a powder keg were there long before the Simi Valley jury with no blacks acquitted the four LAPD cops that beat Rodney King. There was the crushingly high poverty rate in South L.A., a spiraling crime and drug epidemic, neighborhoods that were among the most racially balkanized in the nation, anger over the hand slap sentence for a Korean grocer that murdered a black teenage girl, Latasha Harlins, in an altercation, and black-Korean tensions that had reached a boiling point. And above all, there was the bitter feeling toward an LAPD widely branded as the nation’s perennial poster police agency for brutality and racism.This year, on the 25th anniversary of the King verdict and the L.A. riots, many still ask the incessant question: Can it happen again? The prophets, astrologers and psychics couldn’t answer a question like that with absolute certainty. But there are two hints that give both a “yes” and no answer to the question. The yes is the repeated questionable killings of young unarmed African Americans by police, such as Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, and Philando Castile, nationally and in L.A. County. This continues to toss the ugly glare on the always fragile, tenuous, and at times openly hostile relations between African Americans and the police. The other cause for wariness is conditions in South L.A. and other urban communities.On the fortieth anniversary in 2005 of the other L.A. riot that ripped the nation, namely the Watts riots in 1965, the L.A. chapter of the National Urban League and the United Way issued an unprecedented report on the State of Black L.A. The report called the conditions in South L.A. dismal, stating that Blacks still had higher school drop-out rates, greater homelessness, died younger and in greater numbers, were more likely to be jailed and serve longer sentences, and were far and away more likely to be victims of racial hate crimes than any other group in L.A. County. The most cursory drive through the old riot areas still shows that for many residents little has changed.The L.A. riots are no longer the national and world symbol of American urban racial destruction, neglect and despair. But it’s is still a cautionary tale; a warning that in the Trump era, the poverty, violence and neglect that made the L.A. riots symbolic may not have totally evaporated twenty-five years after the flames. This will stay the case as long as the lots, and what they symbolize, remain empty. See More

On Friday, April 27, the NFL Draft 2017 Begins. Yet, despite a Super Bowl appearance, marketable quarterback skills, a dearth of NFL ready college QBs, and a legion of mediocre NFL QBs, former SF 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick still has not been signed by any NFL team. The Hutchinson Report Pacifica Radio Townhall of the Air on Saturday, April 22, 9:00 AM PST Noon EST on KPFK Radio-Los Angeles 90.7 FM, streamed at kpfk.org will declare his Saturday April 22 show The Colin Kaepernick Hour. The Hutchinson Report Host, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, will ask why Kaepernick remains without a team on the eve of the draft?The Report will challenge NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to pose that Question to the 32 NFL team owners and managers.http://www.ninersnation.com/2017/4/20/15370136/colin-kaepernick-time-100-most-influential-people-jim-harbaugh http://www.espn.com/nfl/feature/index/_/page/nfldraft17See More